Check Your Zone!

(Hey remember it’s Thrifty Thursday! and this is our family’s first official act of thrift.)

Now that we have moved into a bigger home, we have more space which also means more lights and lights in places I can’t see.  We talked in a recent family night about how leaving lights on, as well as the TV and other electronics, cost money.  In an effort to be thrifty, we came up with a light-turn-off-plan.  It is called

Check Your Zone!

Every child was assigned a zone.  Elle volunteered to take the whole downstairs (which is the hardest one).  Crew wanted the upstairs.  I still wanted to give Croft and Locke some responsibility so I assigned Croft the entryway, office and front bathroom and Locke has to turn off the light in his bedroom.  Every one has a zone comparable to their age and abilities.

The kids are responsible to turn off their lights in their zone and make sure all electronics are off too like the TV, radios, Wii, etc.

After we assigned the zones and described their responsibilities, I yelled “Check Your Zone!”  The kids all ran off and turned off the lights in their zone.  By this point the house was pitch black.  So as a fun way to see if they had done their jobs thoroughly we went around the house with a flashlight checking each room.

Now I (or Croft) will yell “Check Your Zone!” before we leave for school, or church, or when we go out at night. It’s fun to see the kids bustle about.  Some kids are doing better than others, but we are still in the practice and learning phase.  Once they have had time to get it down, I am toying with the idea of charging them when they leave a light on in their zone.  I am not there yet. It will depend if the problem is chronic or not.

Turning off lights is just a small act of thrift, but is good for our wallets and our world.